To sleep, perchance to dream
Today…
is the start of National Public Health Week.
in private health, my 12yo has been up all night. Sleep (and lack of) is an ongoing concern in this home, especially with that one. We’re going to try forging through, see how far he can last before passing out.
is National Twinkie Day, and a quick story about the other one. A few years ago, the Babysitters’ Club graphic novels piqued the 10yo’s interest in the junk foods of my youth: Spaghetti-Os, Easy Cheese, Twinkies. We gamely sampled them all, and… to say they didn’t go over doesn’t touch it. She was appalled. She still has words when we pass a Hostess display.
Abortion
In Red States, Abortions Aren’t ‘Essential’ but Guns Are
Eleanor Clift | Daily Beast
Red states are shutting down abortion clinics, determining that the health care they provide is not essential. Yet gun stores and shooting ranges remain open as a supposedly essential industry. That designation was President Donald Trump’s latest gift to the NRA, and the message it sends to women is that gun rights are sacrosanct while women’s health is subject to the whims of the anti-abortion ideologues, also known as Trump’s base.
Republicans think guns are essential during the coronavirus lockdown. Women's health? Not so much
Robin Abcarian | Los Angeles Times
I will give abortion foes this: When it comes to finding new and creative ways of forcing women to give birth to unwanted babies, they are devilishly clever. In the past few weeks, these relentless crusaders have unleashed a new war on a procedure that is safe, legal and time-sensitive. Their casus belli? Coronavirus, of course. Never let a good crisis go to waste, right?
Are Abortions Considered Elective Procedures During Coronavirus? A State By State Roundup
Matthew Impelli | Newsweek
While some states have continued to allow abortion procedures, a number of others have attempted to cancel them, leading to many lawsuits being filed by local abortion clinics against those states' health officials and government leaders.
Seeing Abortion Laws From a Teenager’s Point of View
Reggie Ugwu | New York Times
Eliza Hittman explains how she came to make her timely odyssey “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” the unusual movie about abortion rights that makes bureaucracy the villain.
COVID-19 Could Bring the End of 'Roe v. Wade'
Jessica Mason Pieklo | Rewire.News
Republicans have stacked the federal courts with ideologues willing to entrain any bad faith argument designed to overturn Roe—even the COVID-19 pandemic. Ultimately, what is so dangerous about the COVID-19 fight and abortion is that like the virus itself: It has happened in this country at exactly the worst time.
“The Pandemic Is Being Used as Cover”: Planned Parenthood’s Alexis McGill Johnson on the Dangerous New War on Abortion
Abigail Tracy | Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair spoke with Alexis McGill Johnson, the acting president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, about how antiabortion politicians are seeking to exploit the coronavirus crisis with a spate of abortion bans, under the guise of public health amid the pandemic.
Colorado
Initiative to Ban Abortion at 22 Weeks Fails to Gather Enough Signatures to Make the Ballot
Madeleine Schmidt | Colorado Times Recorder
Initiative 120, which aims to ban abortion at 22 weeks, did not gather the required number of signatures to place the measure on Colorado’s fall ballot, the Secretary of State’s office announced today. That means proponents will be granted a 15 day cure period to meet the 124,632 signature requirement, as required by state law.
New York
New York AG Calls For Nationwide Abortion Access During The Coronavirus
Michel Martin | NPR
NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Letitia James, attorney general of New York, about her call for nationwide access to abortion during the coronavirus pandemic.
North Carolina
8 Charlotte abortion protesters arrested under North Carolina’s ban on mass gatherings
Joe Marusak | Charlotte Observer
Police on Saturday charged eight Charlotte abortion protesters with violating North Carolina’s COVID-19-related ban on mass gatherings. About 50 protesters gathered outside A Preferred Women’s Health Center on Latrobe Drive, according to police. The center has been the scene of numerous abortion protests over the years. That size crowd violates the mass gatherings provision in the state’s stay-at-home order, police said, so officers asked everyone to leave.
Anti-abortion activists in North Carolina are suing because they can't get together to protest
Rafi Schwartz | Mic
Attorneys for the far-right Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom announced plans last week to sue the city of Greensboro after police there arrested a group of anti-choice protesters who had gathered outside a local abortion clinic in defiance of the city's ongoing stay-at-home order to help stop the spread of coronavirus.
Texas
Pregnant women in Texas considering home abortions, traveling out of state, after coronavirus ban
Chantal da Silva | Newsweek
A new policy in Texas barring access to abortion care during the coronavirus outbreak has left pregnant women feeling forced to consider traveling out of state to undergo the procedure or trying at-home remedies to terminate their pregnancies.
Meet the Trump Judge Who Handed Texas Its Abortion Ban
Lisa Needham | Rewire.News
In this new monthly column, we examine Trump-appointed judges, including Kyle Duncan, who are upending long-standing civil and human rights. Over the past three years, President Donald Trump has appointed nearly 200 federal judges, to say nothing of his two appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. In doing so, Trump has reshaped the judiciary, installing conservative jurists who will do his bidding for decades to come.
Texas banned me from providing abortions — using coronavirus as an excuse
Dr. Amna Dermish | Washington Post
As the coronavirus has destabilized the lives of millions, some government officials saw a political opportunity. In Texas, our governor and attorney general effectively banned almost all abortion procedures, citing the pandemic, and states including Oklahoma, Ohio and Alabama have taken similar actions. We indeed face an unprecedented public health crisis, one that makes my patients’ ability to access reproductive health care especially urgent.
LGBTQ
Justice Department says Title IX should exclude transgender female athletes
John Riley | Metro Weekly
The U.S. Department of Justice has sided with a trio of student-athletes from Connecticut who sued the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and multiple school boards in the state for allowing transgender athletes to compete in high school sports based on their gender identity.
Coronavirus isn’t transphobic. But America’s economic and health systems are.
Katelyn Burns | Vox
While there’s no evidence that Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, disproportionately affects trans people, America’s economic and health care systems often marginalize the trans community in several unique ways. In other words, the coronavirus itself isn’t transphobic, but the US is.
Parenting & Caregiving
Women And The Frontlines Of COVID-19
Naomi Cahn | Forbes
With schools and day care centers closed, there’s increasing concern about the impact on women. Even if both parents work full-time, women have now become “the chief operating officers of their households.” And, as a national poll shows, women are more likely than men to say their lives have been disrupted because of the coronavirus.
The Exhausting Balancing Act of Motherhood and Caregiving
L'Oreal Thompson | Medium
The current era of sandwich caregivers are younger, more ethnically diverse, and newer to caregiving when compared to other types of caregivers.
Coronavirus is closing daycare. Child care providers worry they may never reopen
Lillian Mongeau | USA Today
Conditions in the child care field were tenuous before the pandemic, said Rhian Evans Allvin, chief executive officer at the National Association for the Education of Young Children. “The economics are fragile in good times,” she said. “When a crisis like this hits, it is devastating to the child care field.”
Fatherhood is more visible than ever. But will dads working from home actually step up more?
Samantha Schmidt | Washington Post
Some sociologists have begun to wonder whether men will use this extra time at home to step up and take on more of the child-care and household chores. With fatherhood quite literally on display in the virtual workplace, will dads invest more time in taking care of their children? And will they be applauded by their colleagues for doing the same work that women have been doing forever?
Reproductive Health & Justice
The Coronavirus Is Not an "Equalizer" in an Unequal Society
Lucy Diavolo | Teen Vogue
While the virus itself may not care how rich, white, or otherwise privileged you are when it infects you, the pandemic is not actually an equalizer. Calling it one spotlights the rampant inequality already manifest in our society, as an equalizer only works if things are unequal. But the health and economic impacts of this plague will not even out those inequalities — it will sharpen and exacerbate them.
Interest in Home Births Is Spiking as Coronavirus Complicates Labor Plans
Melody Schreiber | VICE
Before the coronavirus pandemic, a little more than 1% of parents delivered their babies at home. But in the face of widespread limitations on hospital births, as well as fears of parents and newborns alike potentially contracting the virus, birth workers said they have seen a spike in interest in home birth. One birth worker in Delaware said she has seen a sevenfold increase in requests. And Google searches for home birth are the highest they've been in more than five years.
New York state, long a holdout against legalizing surrogacy, overturns ban
Elizabeth Chuck | NBC News
New York state is overturning its longheld ban on paid surrogacy, “a bright spot for New York families in these difficult times,” said the co-sponsor of the bill approved Thursday.
Jokes abound about COVID-19 baby names. But not about more STDs and teen pregnancies
Tonyaa Weathersbee | Memphis Commercial Appeal
For the past month, SisterReach has been mailing and distributing safe-sex kits to households throughout the Mid-South. The packets contain male and female condoms, emergency contraception, dental dams and other items to keep people safe and satisfied.
Supreme Court
The Supreme Court Taught Hobby Lobby It’s Above the Law
Dahlia Lithwick | Slate
Is any part of you somehow surprised that Hobby Lobby believes itself to be above the law? After all, just a few years ago no lesser an institution than the U.S. Supreme Court announced that the company could simply ignore federal law when it wanted to deny contraceptive care to its employees.
Supreme Court cancels April arguments, unclear how it will finish term
Robert Barnes | Washington Post
The Supreme Court officially canceled its scheduled oral arguments for April because of health threats caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and left in doubt how the justices will finish their term. The court already had postponed March arguments, which means about 20 cases — including President Trump’s attempts to keep his financial records from congressional committees and a Manhattan prosecutor — are left in limbo.
Workplace Equality
Emergency Paid-Leave Law Could Trigger ‘Big-Time Litigation’
Jaclyn Diaz & Erin Mulvaney | Bloomberg Law News
The Families First Act gives workers at companies with more than 50 and fewer than 500 employees the right to bring cases over unpaid leave to court. That includes through class or collective actions—a provision that some businesses may not realize is part of the law, labor and employment attorneys said.
Most major companies fail in commitment to close gender pay gap
Sheryl Estrada | HR Dive
In response to investor pressure, companies have come under intense scrutiny to close their gender pay gaps; but 3 of 50 major U.S. companies – Starbucks, Mastercard, and Citigroup – received an A on the Gender Pay Scorecard. Half of the top companies graded received an F including AT&T, Goldman Sachs, McDonalds and Walmart.